Anthropology

The Recipe For Chimpanzee Reproductive Success? Bring Home The Bacon (Literally)

Before the invention of boxed chocolates, Corvettes and bling-bling, all a man had to do for sweet lovin' was provide his special ladies with meat.   Studies of extant hunter-gatherer societies show that li terally bringing home the bacon leads to gr ...

Article - Hayley Mann - May 5 2009 - 12:48am

60,000 Year Evolutionary Gap Between African Pygmies And Neighboring Farmers

The central African belt is a fascinating look back in time for humanity because the largest group of hunter–gatherers of Africa, the Pygmies, still inhabit the region and they coexist with neighboring farmers.  All African Pygmies, inhabiting a large terr ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 9 2009 - 8:12pm

The Rock And The Hard Place Of Homer

The Rock And The Hard Place Of Homer The well-known expression: ' between a rock and a hard place ' almost certainly has its earliest origins in Homer's Odyssey. In that saga, Ulysses has to take his ship between Scylla and Charybdis, two r ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Apr 13 2009 - 12:59am

Molecular Anthropology: The Red Headed Step Child Of Biology

Molecular anthropology—you probably haven’t heard of this discipline by name but I guarantee that you already find this particular field fascinating.   Therefore, I’d like to formally introduce to you the field of molecular anthropology which includes suc ...

Article - Hayley Mann - Apr 27 2009 - 4:04pm

A Different Kind Of First Contact

In 1930, in the Highlands of New Guinea, a group of Australian brothers looking for gold stumbled across thousands of Stone Age people who had no concept of the outside world. They happened to bring a movie camera.   And that's probably all I need to ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Apr 16 2009 - 5:19pm

Earth Day Question: Who Were You In 10,000 BC?

It's Earth Day, in case you can't tell by our swanky green Earth logo in the header, and that means people will be thinking about Nature (the bitch, not the magazine) and our impact on her.   I didn't say people would be thinking clearly, bu ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Apr 22 2009 - 9:52am

Assessing a cultural mythos #1 (notes toward studying big boards on the Internet)

I promised myself that I would try to do a regular Wednesday blog about some aspect of my researches.  I thought I would start out with something I've been considering for awhile-- methodologies of studying large user communities on the Internet. Only ...

Blog Post - Mel. White - Apr 22 2009 - 11:08pm

Indus Script- Pictograms Or Language?

In the 19th century, the Rosetta Stone allowed scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization and decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics.  But many mysteries remain about the symbols found on other ancient artifact, including those o ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 23 2009 - 2:18pm

Now Playing: "The Bone Dispute," Starring UC San Diego As The Ambiguous Caped Crusader

In a previous article, I discussed the controversies associated with anthropological research and debunked myths regarding the true intentions of molecular anthropologists.  Furthermore, I also provided examples of Native American communities willing to wo ...

Article - Hayley Mann - Apr 28 2009 - 1:24pm

Native Americans Descended From A Single Ancestral Group (Which Includes Greenlanders)- Study

Did ancestors of Native Americans migrate to the New World in one wave or successive waves, from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations?   The topic has been debated for decades but after comparing DNA samples from people in do ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2009 - 10:00am